son of the shaykh, the gnostic Abū al-Fatḥ Maḥmūd ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān al-Maḥmūdī, al-Jawīthī, al-ʿIrāqī, the Sufi, better known as Ibn al-Ṣābūnī.
He was born in 556 AH in Jawīth, a large settlement on the outskirts of Basra, from which it is separated by the Tigris River.
While still a boy he received an ijāza (formal licence to transmit ḥadith) from Abū al-Muṭahhir al-Qāsim ibn al-Faḍl al-Ṣaydalanī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan al-Ṣaydalanī, al-Khaḍir ibn al-Faḍl—known as Rajul—, Abū Masʿūd ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Ḥājjī, and Abū al-Fatḥ ibn al-Baṭṭī. His father then took him on travels during which he heard ḥadith from Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī as well as from his own father.
He transmitted a large corpus. Among those who narrated from him were his son, the ḥadith scholar Abū Ḥāmid; his grandson Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad; al-Ḍiyāʾ; al-Mundhirī; al-Dimyāṭī; ʿĪsā ibn Yaḥyā al-Sabtī; al-Tāj Ibn Abī ʿAṣrūn; ʿAlī ibn Baqāʾ; Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-Mashhadī; his brother ʿAbd al-Raḥmān; Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Saqaṭī; Abū Naṣr Ibn al-Shīrāzī; Abū Saʿīd Sunqar al-Qaḍāʾī; and many others.
He became the Sufi shaykh in charge of the Khātūnī lodge and the Mosque of the Elephants, and for a period he led the prayers commissioned by Sultan al-Malik al-Afḍal ʿAlī in Damascus. He was intelligent, humble, trustworthy, and possessed genuine merit.
He passed away in the ribāṭ adjoining the shrine of Lady Nafīsa on 13 Shawwāl 640 AH.